Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Friday, July 01, 2016

New Federal Rule Strikes Another Devastating Blow Against Coal Industry

The Department of the Interior changed the rules governing royalty rates that oil and coal companies must pay to the federal government to extract gas and coal from public lands. The regulation essentially uses the gross proceeds from a sell, not a percentage, to determine the royalty rates energy producers must pay to use public lands to extract oil and coal. There will be modest reductions taken into account, based on transportation and processing costs.
Up until now, royalty rates did not take into account the supposedly high costs associated with climate change, environmentalist group Friends of the Earth wrote in a press statement announcing the rule change.
The new rule essentially seeks to wring money out of energy providers who use public lands to extract oil and coal, as well as natural gas. Energy analysts also fear a royalty tax would stunt oil and coal production...more